


This Is All We Got Now

by Muir_Wolf



Category: Big Bang Theory
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, F/M, Superpowers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-04-25
Updated: 2010-04-25
Packaged: 2017-10-09 03:50:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/82710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muir_Wolf/pseuds/Muir_Wolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sheldon as Supervillian and Penny as Superhero. But they both have plentiful issues. And this is not a happy story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	This Is All We Got Now

**Author's Note:**

> This is set in an AU (clearly), but Sheldon's story doesn't hugely diverge until halfway through 3.01. Penny's diverges substantially before then.
> 
> Written for Paradox's kink!meme. Title from Lostprophet's "Rooftops." Word Count - 3218

He showed up one day almost a year ago. She doesn't know where he came from, or why he has three scars that trace from his left eye to dip below his shirt. Everyone has origin stories these days, but something about the way he speaks—clipped and never hurried, more disdainful than hateful, but always with a level of bitterness that he can never hide from her—makes her think that maybe his story has more meaning than vengeance or bloodlust, that what he's seeking is neither anarchy nor power.

He wears black. Black leather pants, a snug black shirt that goes to his forearms, and a black mask that doesn't hide his _blueblue_ eyes or the ways his lips purse when he gets irritated.

The others have always gone for style and flash, they've burnt the sky with rockets strapped to their backs, they've yelled out their presence in the crowd with oranges and reds and greens, they've shouted their demands and spewed their hatred, they've toppled buildings and killed people because they thought they should. And she caught them. She's always caught them.

They call her Maverick to her face, although she's seen the newspapers with _Annie Oakley Returns_ and _The Last Cowgirl Fights Back._ Maverick. An unbranded range animal. She thinks it fitting, and lets the writer who coined it know she approves when she drops by to save the _Pasadena Gazette_ from going up in flames. She likes the freedom of the word, as well as the danger, and she's never been a fan of the slutty superheroes. They can stay away from her range, she's got it covered.

She wasn't always a superhero of course. She was going to be an actress, she was going to take Hollywood by storm. Except four years ago, on her way to Pasadena, her boyfriend Kurt ran a red light and crashed the car into a truck, and two gallons of chemicals spilled into their car as she laid there, unconscious.

They said it was a miracle she lived (he didn't), so she didn't mention the fact that her reflexes were sharpened past-human, that she was stronger, faster, and had developed the sudden knack for controlling water molecules. Her hair's grown back and her arm has healed and she's gotten past that wreck just like she's gotten past everything in her life. And she's never looked back.

Superheroes used to be comic books and bad television, books and big production movies, but now they're passé, old news, they're crawling out of the woodwork in droves, as the world falls to shambles, as science works against nature. Six years ago Jeffrey Dunner proved that he could fly. Eight months later he was shot dead.

No man can live forever.

So the disguises make sense, because no matter what side of the line you walk, hero or villain, everyone else is a danger to you. Special is always feared.

She ties her hair into pigtails and dons her cowboy hat and boots, and she wears cutoffs and a white tank top and a pink mask, because she's always known she'd have to be something, even if it's here in Pasadena, and if she could hogtie a pig before she can do a lot more with a lasso and a criminal now.

Except nine months ago he walked into her town.

They call him Darwin, because the first time he walked into a bank and brought it down around his ears a security guard heard him say, "Survival of the fittest." It fits. It's a full-on war cry. And this, Maverick think, this could be bad, this could be very fucking bad.

He hits banks every once and awhile, but the need for money seems almost an afterthought. He goes after scientific buildings, targeting specific research, specific pharmacies, stores, symbols, devices. He recites equations like doctrine, as if his word is his law. He's crafting academia as he believes it should be, and he doesn't care who gets hurt in his path.

_And he can't die._

They all have powers, nowadays, but bullets don't pierce his skin, and knives don't cut his flesh, and even words don't seem to touch him. He's silent except when he's explaining why he has to tear down a building, his voice low.

_"Leonard," he says, "Leonard, I'm fixing it, it'll never happen again."_

And sometimes, she thinks, sometimes he does things because he can, because he hurts and he wants someone else to hurt, too.

It's not until he rigs the chemical plant on the outside of town to self-destruct, again without the mass-massacre he had to work to avoid, but still without any care for those who happened to be in the vicinity, that she gets even an inkling. Four hundred people lost their jobs, the air filled with smoke miles around, six dead, seventeen wounded, but she has an idea about what makes him tick.

It's the Texan drawl he slips into when they're fighting and he's trying to get away but she won't let him, when his irritation overwhelms him and his emotions interfere with his calculating, the accent and the factory and she can't help but wonder.

A year and a half ago, in September, a plant exploded outside Galveston, Texas. Between the first explosion and the fire and the way the explosion had cracked foundations and water lines, almost eleven hundred people had died, and half that injured. Protocols had been overlooked, systems had not been kept up-to-date, and after two months of investigation it was revealed that a group of scientists had been conducting unapproved experiments that led unsafe chemicals being mixed in an already precarious environment.

Eleven hundred people. And he couldn't die.

She's crafting an origin story for him, out of guesses and half-truths. They trade barbs as they battle across rooftops, but he's not after her, and she can't hurt him, so he always slips away. He ranges farther out to find what he's looking for, but always comes home to Pasadena, and the newspaper headlines flood the streets, but he's on more than a vendetta, he's on a crusade.

He's an enemy of the people, and she's been chosen as their savior. They're playing out a charade, they're affecting the steps to the dance, but he's not after her, and she's still a step behind, still grasping at the pieces that don't quite fit together, because there's more than sorrow and bitterness in his _blueblue_ eyes as he shoves her backwards, and when she twists her palm to collect enough water in the air to freeze his black boot to the ground he looks at her with something almost like pride.

_"Perhaps there's hope for you yet, Maverick," he says, smile awkward with disuse, but when she reaches for him he's gone._

She knows that she's too curious, that she has too many questions she'll never know the answer too.

And when she runs into a burning building to try to save a child, giving herself a nosebleed from trying to pull enough water to help smother the fire, and the ceiling collapses in as she gets near, the girl screaming for help, the smoke thick, and she drops to her knees, grabbing the girl in her arms, there's a man in black, his clothing burning away, who grabs her around the waist, and when she pulls away to grab the girl tighter, eyes watering, he grabs her again and drags them both out and away.

She wakes up in an alleyway two streets away, the girl unconscious in her arms, but still breathing, _still breathing,_ and what the fuck. What. The. Fuck.

But the next time they meet she hits him and he hits her back just as hard and they dance away, and sometimes she stops him, but sometimes she doesn't.

And when it comes down to it, this is her adopted home, and she's not going to let someone fuck it over. So she does the one thing she hates. She takes off her mask, changes her clothes, and goes to the library. Research time.

It's more than depressing, going through fourteen hundred names, checking careers and vocations, but she has her clues.

Darwin is smart. Genius smart. And he was attached to Galveston. And is attached to Pasadena. And he lost someone named Leonard.

Two weeks and over four hundred phone calls later, she has a drink for the first time in two years.

He hadn't just lost Leonard. He'd lost his family, and two other friends. He'd lost everyone.

But then they'd all lost someone in the last five years, hadn't they? The world's going to hell, and he's just hurrying it on its way.

And she has to stop him.

 

./.

 

It takes a bit to figure it out. But Caltech's science department is having an exhibit of Science through the Ages, with keynote speakers. It's the Who's Who of the Science world delivered into his hands, and she can't believe that anyone could be so stupid as so not see his endgame, to have not seen his endgame all along.

It starts tomorrow morning.

She changes in the library bathroom and climbs out of the window. _Yeah, being a superhero is super fabulous, world,_ she thinks, except she's thinking of _blueblue_ eyes and the devastation he must have felt, and she's running as fast as she can but she knows she'll never get there in time, because he needed her two years ago, he needed someone when his world was destroyed and he couldn't save the people he needed to save.

The killing shot has been fired, and she's just waiting for him to realize it.

Two o'clock in the morning on top of the physics building she finds him, a device in his hand that's blinking red and she's seen enough movies and fought enough criminals to know what it means without him saying anything, and she really doesn't want to see the building explode, but especially not with her on top of it.

"Darwin," she says. She speaks slowly, knowing she'll have to find her way through this conversation carefully. "You don't have to do this."

"Penny," he says, and some small part of her burns at the sound of her name. _Her name._

"How did you—?" she starts, but he shakes her off.

"_Know thy enemy,_" he says, the details clearly unimportant to him. "You need to leave," he says, instead. "You need to leave this area, it isn't safe."

"I figured it out, I called it in," she says. "The building's empty, they've all gone home, you'll achieve nothing."

"It's not just the science building, it's the university," he says. "You were supposed to be following me to Los Angeles, you were _supposed to be safe._"

She's always known he'd be brilliant.

"The university? The _entire_ university?" she asks. "Why? Why the fuck are you doing this?"

She shoves him, hard, and he just takes it, so she pushes him harder, until he trips and falls to the ground.

"Do it," he says, voice almost cruel, "Do it, Maverick. Finish me off if you can. Take your best shot, I won't stop you."

He's never been outright cruel to her before, and it stops her for a moment.

"I won't let you do this," she says, crouching down next to him, her eyes pinning him in place, and he shrinks back, shrinks into himself, shaking his head.

"Penny," he says, voice breathless, "Penny, I can't live anymore. I don't want to _live_ anymore."

And despite the fact that he's left people to die without a second thought, that he's run havoc on California for a year and that she's chased him with desperation and determination for just as long, despite the fact that she'd sworn to give up pity for justice, she feels herself falter.

"You're from Galveston," she says, and he closes his eyes, nods. "You're Sheldon Cooper," she says, and his _blueblue_ eyes flare open wide as he stares at her.

"How did you—"

"I'm Maverick," she says. "It's what I do."

He's silent for a long moment. "I went home," he says, voice low, confiding secrets she's sure he's never told anyone else. "I was angry and I went home to Texas, and they followed me. Rajesh Koothrappali, Howard Wolowitz, and Leonard Hofstadter."

The names roll on his tongue like saints names off of sinner's lips, delicate and fragile and only half-real.

"It wasn't your fault," she says, the promise easy, and he laughs, the sound harsh.

"They shouldn't have been there. My—my mother, though, she—" He stutters to an abrupt stop, eyes downcast. " _'Look at what we hath wrought,'_" he says at last. "I have to fix it," he says, blueblue eyes dark as he looks up at her.

"I can't let you do that," she says, firm, and he half-chokes in a sob.

"Science is all I ever had," he says. "It's all I ever had and it killed everyone I ever cared about. _I have to fix it._"

"I can't let you," she says, standing up, and he tenses, and then sits, silent, as she stands there, waiting.

"Can you stop me?" he asks, and the question is part plea, part mock. They both know she can't.

"If you do this," she says, "Then you'll have to kill me, too."

It's a gamble, she knows, but something in the news articles that now litter her apartment floor, in the way he'd saved her from that burning building, in that he'd lost everyone _real_ to him, makes her think that maybe he'll back down, maybe he'll walk away, and it's stupid and it's arrogant and she doesn't even care, because after Kurt she'd walked away from everyone, too, having a quick fuck here and there but always hiding herself, and maybe it's just nice to be seen.

On impulse she lifts her hat and pulls off her mask, the night air cool on her cheeks as she looks down at him, and slowly he pulls himself up to his feet, slender fingers dragging his own mask off as well, and they're standing there, bare before each other.

He steps forward and she braces herself, but she's not sure what for, and then his fingers reach out and tuck her blonde hair behind her ear. "I don't want you to die, Maverick," he says, voice low, and she smiles shakily up at him.

"Penny," she says. "Call me Penny," she says. "I miss my name."

He closes his eyes and swallows, and she watches his Adam's apple contract with difficulty, feels his hand tremble against her skin.

"They didn't take my name," he says. "They just took everyone who used it."

There is something like tenderness in her eyes as she places her hand over his heart. "_Sheldon,_" she says. "Your name is Sheldon."

"I've caused…I've caused many deaths, Penny. You can't simply let me go."

"No," she says. "No, I can't."

He leans into her, and she tilts her chin up almost unconsciously.

"Penny," he whispers, and she closes her eyes, and he kisses her, hard, a year's worth of pain and this bittersweet affection he's carried inside like a torch for her, and she doesn't care about any of it. She bites down on his lip and he half-moans into her mouth and he backs her up into the wall and she has her arms around her neck and he pulls her legs up around his waist and _what is she doing?_ she grinds into him as he licks her neck and cups her breast and _this is insane_ she moans his name, moans "Sheldon," and he shivers against her, his hand on her ass as she fumbles with the zipper of his pants.

_Leather_ pants. She gasps into his neck as he rips her panties off and then he's in her, hard, like they both want it, her nails digging into the back of his neck, her back scraping against the wall.

"Penny," he says into her ear, "Penny, you have to," and she bites into his neck as if it'll _shut him the fuck up_ and he groans into her hair as she locks her legs so that he's fully in her, holding him there, inside her, so she can pretend for just one moment that they're living a different life.

"_Penny,_" he says, and she lets go, lets him fuck her, lets him _love_ her, and when she comes she screams "_Darwin!_" and when he comes he whispers "_Maverick,_" and this is the way their world is, they never had a chance, they never had a _prayer._ So after one long, shattering moment, as he looks into her eyes and regrets a million things but none of them his crimes, she puts her small hands on his cheeks and leans her forehead against his.

"Tell me what to do," she says, voice soft, and he closes his eyes and nods and lets her go.

"You can manipulate water," he says, and from the look in her eyes she knows this is _bad very fucking bad_ but she doesn't move. "If you draw the water from my body, I think it'll kill me."

She stands there, wide-eyed, staring at him.

"Listen to me, and listen to me well," he says, and his voice is suddenly sharper and more sinister than she's ever heard before. "If you don't do this than I'll knock you out and blow the building and you will accomplish _nothing._ Now, Maverick, are you a superhero or is this just one more failed career in your string of failed careers?"

Maybe three years ago she'd cry. Maybe two years ago she'd fly into a rage and kill him. But she's older and wiser and seen more and done more than any of those girls she used to be.

"Goodbye Darwin," she says, and then stands on tiptoes and presses her lips to his, soft and chaste. His expression shatters, and his fingers slide under her chin, keeping her face tilted up towards his.

"Goodbye Penny," he says, and then he grabs her hand and presses it to his chest. "Do it, before I change my mind."

./.

She knows the pain has to be excruciating, but he doesn't make a sound as his body shudders, the invincible man finally being defeated. The water drips down onto the ground as blood drips from her nose and tears from her eyes, and when it's over, he's lying on the ground, still.

At peace, maybe, after so long.

"Goodbye, Sheldon," she says, her voice soft as the wind picks up. And then slowly, methodically, she starts stripping him, because what was Darwin is gone, and she'll be damned if Sheldon Cooper gets the sword once again.

She leaves him on the roof, naked. There's nothing else she can do for him. There's nothing else she can do for anyone, maybe. The ground below looks tempting, but she's never been that kind of girl. Black clothes in her arms, she descends, and she moves past, just like she always moves past.

And her chest is tight and her eyes burn, but she doesn't look back.

She never looks back.

 

_Finis_


End file.
